The Reverend Edmund Luttrell Stuart died in 1869 aged 71 having been for many years rector of the tiny rural parish of Winterbourne Houghton in deepest Dorset. In marked contrast to this outwardly modest existence – ‘a country parson, holding a living of 158 pounds a year’1 – not one, not two but all three of his sons would succeed to an earldom dating from 1562, sundry other titles, and houses and acres galore some six hundred miles north. It was a family destiny altered by the failing of an aristocratic direct line described as ‘almost without parallel in the British Peerage’.2
The good reverend’s own father Archibald Stuart had in fact missed out on the very same inheritance only by a matter of minutes, his twin brother Francis eventually succeeding as the 10th Earl of Moray in 1810. By such twists of birth – and one particular generation’s spectacular lack thereof – 50-year-old John Douglas Stuart (r) stands today ennobled as the 21st Earl of Moray, Lord Abernethy, Lord Strathdearn, Lord Doune, Lord St. Colme and Baron Stuart of Castle Stuart. When the 17th earl died in 1930 he could boast almost as many country houses as he had titles. Some have since been repurposed or sold but the Moray property portfolio remains considerable including two wholly private mansions which lie at the heart of estates held by this family over many centuries.
Foremost historically has been the remote fastness of Darnaway Castle, still today enveloped by ‘an extent of woodland which as surrounding the residence of any gentleman in Scotland is, perhaps, unexampled‘. The most renowned element of this Grade A house is its medieval Great Hall featuring, a full ninety feet above the ground, ‘the earliest surviving roof of its type in Britain’. Known also as Randolph’s Hall, this space – ‘said to be capable of holding 1,000 men-at-arms’ – is the last remnant of an embattled past, the earldom of Moray and its concomitant estates having long been a prize worth fighting for.
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In the tumultuous turf warfare of Scotland’s early history the earldom of Moray was a strategic reward which frequently reverted to the gift of the Crown. It was first created by King Robert the Bruce for his nephew and ally Thomas Randolph in 1312. However, dendochronology dates the hammer-beam roof (left) of Darnaway’s Great Hall to 1387 by which time the title and its attendant property had been freshly bestowed upon Randolph’s grandson, John Dunbar (d. 1391).
By the mid-C16 the earldom was held by George Gordon, already the 4th Earl of Huntly. But the machinations of Mary, Queen of Scots would initiate the present Moray line in 1562 when she relieved Gordon of his second title in favour of her half-brother, James Stewart, one of the many illegitimate sons of King James V of Scotland. This (fifth) iteration of the Moray earldom has endured despite the most inauspicious of beginnings, earls one and two both being sensationally murdered.
An ambitious man ‘blighted by bastardy’, James Stewart’s loyalty to his half-sister was tested to breaking point by Mary’s car-crash marriages after the tragic loss of her first husband, Francis, Dauphin of France.3 One month on from her forced abdication, in August 1567 Stewart would be declared Regent – de facto King – in the stead of Mary’s one-year-old son, James. The Earl of Moray’s ‘reign’ was not wildly popular but his regard soared almost overnight when on January 21, 1570 he gained the unwelcome distinction of becoming the first recorded victim of assassination by gunshot.
Violent death would also be the popular making of Stewart’s successor, his son-in-law James Stuart who ‘on his marriage acquired in some way which has never been made clear the dignity of Earl of Moray’.4 The marriage in 1581 of his 13-year-old son to the 15-year-old daughter of ‘the Good Regent’ had been a personal coup for another James Stuart, the master of Doune Castle (r) in Perthshire (who would be ennobled as Lord Doune the same year). Alas, the 2nd Earl of Moray was exasperatingly different from his canny father: ‘The advancement he reveled in, the constraints of marriage he ignored.’3 Though fathering five children, Moray routinely neglected his wife and the Darnaway estate in favour of familiar territory at Doune almost 150 miles south.
Although ruinous from the turn of the eighteenth century, Doune Castle remained the possession of the earls of Moray until the 1980s and is today managed as a heritage attraction by Historic Scotland. But the Moray Estate still includes the Doune Park estate of more than 12,000 acres, with extensive (vestigial) gardens and an early-nineteenth century house, Doune Lodge (left).
Developed in front of a long two-storey C18 range, the plain classical mansion with its three-bay Doric portico and ‘simple, distinctive interior’ (left) is rather upstaged by the remote stable block.5 ‘A spectacular palace for horses,’ the main facade of this quadrangular edifice with its hipped roofed pavilions and central octagonal steeple can be clearly seen from the bounds of the private parkland.6
The standing of the wayward 2nd earl was somewhat undermined by the death of his well-born wife in 1591. Early the following year a combination of monarchical insecurity and hereditary enmity lead to Moray’s fatal ambush by the 6th Earl (later 1st Marquess) of Huntly and his cohorts at Donibristle House, his mother’s home on north shore of the Firth of Forth.
A lifesize painting of the young earl’s disfigured cadaver (commissioned by his mother and sent to the King) now hangs behind screens in the Great Hall of Darnaway Castle having been rediscovered a century ago at Donibristle.
Remarkably, James Stuart, son and heir of ‘the Bonnie Earl‘ would eventually wed the daughter of his father’s killer, a peace-making alliance encouraged by King James. The 3rd earl ‘was a quiet unobtrusive man, who neither courted nor attained notoriety’ (and indeed for the next one hundred years the Moray line continued relatively peaceably). But James did make his mark, not least with the building of Castle Stuart on the Moray Firth north-east of Inverness in 1625. Latterly repurposed as a hotel and championship golf course, Castle Stuart remains a significant element of the modern estate.
And, despite its grizzly association, Donibristle never fell from favour. In the early part of the C18 the 6th Earl of Moray decided to build a large new house on the site, the original L-shaped wings and grand gates of which stand today before a reconstructed main block. The earl and his next four successors were laid to rest in the contemporaneous mortuary chapel; today both buildings are surrounded by the suburbia of Dalgety Bay, a 1960s/70s ‘newtown’ development promoted by the 19th earl.
Francis Stuart, 9th Earl of Moray would return the family focus back to Darnaway, replacing the crumbling stone tower house with the ‘huge pile of princely appearance’ which stands today.
The mass of the 11-bay north-facing castellated main facade is interrupted by a raised entrance with Gothic windows: ‘The overall effect is undeniably imposing but achieved through uniformity rather than architectural sophistication.’7 In the south the roof of the Great Hall was preserved upon new sandstone ashlar walls centrally perpendicular to the new main block by architect Alexander Laing.
As glimpsed (but not identified) in 2014 BBC TV series The Secret History of Our Streets, ‘the interior is very fine .. with few material changes since 1812’.7 The first floor entrance hall (left) is dominated by a screen of four Corinthian pillars and a profusion of portraits from ‘one of the UK’s finest private art collections’.
Separate staircases service the east and west wings and feature, like all of Darnaway’s principal spaces, much fine decorative plasterwork. At the rear to the west a quadrant links to an eight-bay service wing (see above).
Amidst a designed landscape of some 2,800 acres and with far-reaching vistas to the coast, in its precipitous setting Darnaway has been adjudged ‘even more magnificent in point of situation than it is handsome and beautiful in structure’.
Long private approaches from the east and west (r) are sentineled by substantial mid-C19 lodges and ‘highly impressive contemporary gates’.7 The expansive 9th earl was also largely responsible for the present 4,500 acres of Darnaway Forest having planted well over ten million trees during his 43-year tenure.
The building of Darnaway Castle would be completed by his son Francis Stuart, 10th earl, but the latter’s most distinctive built legacy is to be found 160 miles further south.
In 1782 his father had purchased the Drumsheugh Estate just outside Edinburgh which forty years on was now abutted on three sides by the expanding city. Succumbing to the commercial pressure on his own terms, Stuart and his agents planned the Moray Feu, a high-end residential development which remains the smartest quarter in Edinburgh with ‘the longest Georgian terrace in Europe’.
While the 19th earl’s initiative at Dalgety Bay was architecturally undistinguished, in the 21st century the 21st earl has drawn some inspiration from the Moray Feu to continue the family’s urban development tradition. Earlier this year saw the first residents moving in to properties at Tornagrain, a new town planned entirely from scratch on 500 acres of Moray Estate land fifteen miles west of Darnaway Castle. Amongst a wave of landowners responding to the UK housing shortage, Tornagrain is ‘looking to the Scottish vernacular for architectural inspiration’ for its 5,000 varied housing units, a project the earl believes will occupy him for the rest of his days.
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The 10th Earl of Moray died on the 12th of January, 1848 setting in train the remarkable sixty-year sequence which would see title and estate pass in turn to six male Stuart heirs none of whom produced a child. The earl had four sons (two each by different wives): all lived beyond sixty years of age but none would marry. They inherited successively, averaging eleven-and-a-half years under the ermine.
While the incumbency of last of these, George, the 14th earl was, at twenty-three years, comfortably the longest, ‘his Lordship was almost personally unknown in the district where he owned large estates, but which he seldom visited. He never occupied Darnaway Castle and it was never let‘.2
At his death in 1895 the sons of the Dorset vicar mentioned at the outset – the grandsons of the 10th earl’s twin brother Archibald – were now called upon. But the drought of direct heirs continued, earls 15 and 16 both dying childless. At last, their brother Morton, upon his death in 1930, was finally able to leave all to a son. However, Francis, 18th Earl of Moray would have only daughters, his brother Archibald being duly obliged to throw up a settled family life in southern Africa for the cooler climes of northern Scotland in 1943.
Since when, the son and (presently) the grandson of the 19th earl have straightforwardly succeeded to the 30,000-acre estate. Throughout its turbulent history a constant feature of the Moray inheritance has been an ancient oak estimated to be exactly synchronous with the 700-year-old title. At Darnaway, it would seem, the acorns are once again falling closer to the tree…